Blunt To Business: Invest In Science, Medicine

Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt says advances in medical and food science are going to be among the great challenges of the next two decades.

Missouri Senator Roy Blunt before Greater Kansas City Area Chamber of Commerce.

Credit Dan Verbeck / KCUR

The state’s junior Senator drew parallels as he spoke to the greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce in an address billed as “economic.”

The Republican Senator said medical advances go hand in hand with the agricultural economy, as the world’s food needs will double by 2050.

Blunt told Chamber members there is a common denominator for the two seemingly separate fields, “you can’t solve these problems without science. We’re not going to do what we’ve done in the last 10,000 on food without science.”

The Senator said the Midwest would be smart to invest in a wide range of sciences.

“I still think medicine is a pretty infant science, and we’re going to see lots of changes in a very short time and we’re either going to be leaders of that or followers in that,” he said.

Blunt said the U.S. has to be careful to avoid what’s happened in Brazil where, he says, food production outweighs ability to ship it to a world market.

He did not tie his medical science comments to the Affordable Care Act as some expected.

Nor did Blunt reveal how he will vote in the upcoming congressional vote on military action against Syria, except that he is left with two or three bad-choice options.